Blue-gray mouse
| Blue-gray mouse | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Pseudomys glaucus | ||||||||||||
| Thomas , 1910 |
The blue-gray mouse ( Pseudomys glaucus ), also known as the blue-gray Australian small mouse , is an extinct rodent belonging to the genus Australian mice . It occurred in southern Queensland and New South Wales . Nothing is known about their way of life.
features
The blue-gray mouse reached a head-torso length of 93 mm, a tail length of 111 mm, a hind foot length of 22.5 mm, an ear length of 18 mm and a weight of 25 to 30 grams. The fur was soft and thin. The back hair was approximately 11 to 12 mm long. The back was light blue-gray, the underside a lighter gray. The medium-sized ears were gray. Hands and feet were silver-white. The top of the tail was light brown, the underside of the tail was white. The blue-gray mouse was at times considered to be a subspecies of the smaller Western Australian species Pseudomys albocinereus , as the skull structure is very similar.
status
The blue-gray mouse is only known from three specimens. The two type specimens were collected in Queensland and described by Oldfield Thomas in 1910 . A third specimen was found at Cryon, New South Wales, in 1956. Despite an intensive search at Cryon in the 1990s, the species could not be rediscovered. The reasons for their disappearance are unclear, presumably the hunted down by predators and habitat destruction played a role.
literature
- Peter Menkhorst: A Field Guide to the Mammals of Australia. Illustrated by Frank Knight. Oxford University Press, South Melbourne et al. 2001, ISBN 0-19-550870-X .
- Oldfield Thomas : New Australian Muridae of the genus Pseudomys. In: The Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Series 8, Vol. 6, 1910, ZDB -ID 280102-4 , pp. 607-610, here p. 609, doi : 10.1080 / 00222931008692891 .
- Steve Van Dyck, Ronald Strahan (Eds.): The Mammals of Australia. 3. Edition. Reed New Holland, Sydney et al. 2008, ISBN 978-1-877069-25-3 , pp. 631-632.